This is the most important question to be asked in this thread.
What kind of people are working on this? Can we see concept art? What about other games you have worked on?
The idea looks as exciting as difficult to execute correctly. I'll be your most loyal player, but you have to show me the goods. Prove me this is not vaporware, a moneygrab, nor another The War Z.

If you do visit the http://universeprojects.com site, you'll see concept art and tech demos as well as an extensive article on the subject. It may not give you all the confidence you're looking for, but its a start.

Holy shit they literally used diablo 2's HUD. When I first heard of this game I was looking forward to it. Then I saw they wanted referalls and I lost some hope. Now that I see this, I'm cracking up. This is such bullshit lmao

He already did a test Q&A, here it is, http://www.twitch.tv/universeprojects/b/367660862 he does touch on a question on if it is a scam or not. There is some proof right there. There is a reason he didn't start with a kickstarter. One is because he needs money to work full time. If he doesn't get the money, he will still work on it on the side and he says everyone will get their money back.

I think they are asking you to enter your e-mail address for legal reasons, not just marketing reasons. Obviously, it's a good idea to get e-mails to keep the interest going, but I'm not sure if you can just show your game using other game's GUIs and HUDs. I am, of course, not a lawyer and completely guessing.

I cannot say 100% for sure as things may change during development, depending on who gets involved. I will say that the aim is an upfront payment for the game, but free to play. The game will be sustained via in-game real-money transaction between players (similar to Diablo 3 without the global auction house. You have to find players to trade with)

That is a difficult thing to predict, I would rather say that public testing of the full game could happen as soon as 1 year from the start of full time development. Although, testing will actually begin much sooner (even public testing).

They would have, but the grid based stuff is being thrown in the trash. Because later versions of the game require more granular movement (the 3D version), the 2D versions will have to allow that as well.

I was reading the timeline on the website and it seems you're currently spending a large chunk of time developing the space aspect of the game, when it also seems this part of the game won't be seen for years once the game becomes actually playable. What is the reason for this?

Using the space game as a testing platform is a big win on at least 2 major fronts. First, a real-time space shooter will provide much needed stress testing of the Game Elements Networking Framework. Without this kind of testing, we may find bugs much further down the road because the Universe Project is going to be a much slower paced game at the start, and testing the networking in a fast paced environment will really put the framework through the wringer. The second big win has to do with the fact that we're donation funded. The space game (for lack of a better term) will allow us to showcase progress on the foundational frameworks much sooner, allowing gamers to get their hands on something fun to test and play before the Universe Project is ready. We believe we could even have public testing begin as soon as 2 months into funded development!

Depending on the success of the space game, we may actually develop it further to reflect more of the Universe Project philosophy. It could continue to serve as a test platform for nearly every component of the Universe Project, while providing backers some great fun along the way. More specifically, we could include the ability to build bases, discover and invent new technology, and turn the whole game into a single game world operating on a seamless cluster of servers. We could even test a 3D version of the game, in combination with the 2D clients, when WebGL is ready for primetime.

I am having serious doubts on the outcome of this title. As a veteran programmer, this seems almost impossible. What you are concluding is creating a simulation of the entire universe within a machine capable of doing frivolous things such as farming, building,﻿ fighting, creating, destroying, huge spacial differences, etc? You are asking too much for our current generation technology. There are many unanswered questions that are surrounding me, but it is impossible for me to write them here. I would not mind joining a call and having a debate about your project.

Let's start with the world. Considering the world being 5,502,570,000,000,000 feet2 is immense enough, but suppose you aren't developing a 16x16 pixel art game with 8 vertex points per cubic meter (Minecraft) and have 1 vertex per cubic foot resulting in one bit of data being used. That is 6.55957 x 108 MB of data needed or 625.57 TB. Realistically, you need way more than one bit﻿ and one vertex per cubic foot for lighting, more complex shapes, and textures. <- That is just for the 3d world. 2d has a similar concept but does not have to deal with complicated world matrices meaning less data. So take that 625 tb and cut it down to about 10-50 tb. A giant texture that is over 5,502,570,000,000,000 feet? I think not.

People are asking the wrong questions such as "Will there be blah blah... " or "Is this skill gonna be blah blah" or "Will it be a 3d game?" People need to ask the technical questions and understand that this game is impossible to replicate. The developer will likely ignore my thoughts and questions because he knows he cannot answer them. Computer scientists have dreamed to create a parallel universe because then we can simulate the fate of our existence or solve problems we cannot test within our own world. I call this project a sham and am disgusted that a fellow developer can even think this project will go anywhere.

Another note - HTML5? Seriously? You expect us to run that 5,502,570,000,000,000 feet world in HTML5? Just stop. HTML5 does not even work directly work with machine code and is in browser.

All I am saying is I hope this project fails way before everyone puts their time and money into investing with this project.

Your concerns are understood, but for most of them the answer is "it doesn't really work that way".

I've come up with a fractal algorithm (its not all that innovative imo) that allows me to pin-point generate any part of the planet with very little overhead. This means we only have to store changes made to the planet. This can be extended to generate a universe worth of universe from a single seed.

Html5 is a client side technology, which will only need to render the parts that the client can actually see. The server doesn't even have the whole planet loaded in-memory, it will also only be simulating the parts of the planet characters are able to see (and some AI controlled entities).

I would love to have a debate with someone on the technicalities, I can't talk about it enough.

I think this was the most important question in this thread, and you answered it somewhat well. I'd like to see you do a Live Technical Q&A with jok3r09 or another skilled programmer. As a programmer myself I had some of the same initial reactions & questions as he did, I would definitely be interested in watching a technical Q&A.

I think it's unfair to write this off or call it nonsense before hearing more. I think anyone would be a fool to give UniverseProject money just yet, but I would like to see a live technical Q&A or a video of detailed tech discussion.

Just as siberian said, Castle Story did it well, they had a working demo of the tech. Just because UniverseProject doesn't have that yet doesn't mean it's nonsense, but they sure as hell better produce that or they will never get off the ground.

Well, the pictures show that each tile in the 2D map is more like 5x5 feet. If for some reason they really decide to store every square as a separate data point (which is a really terrible idea given the amount of land nobody will ever care about), then that's still far too much data to deal with at once, yes. On the other hand, it is not a giant texture: it's an array of tiles that only need small sections drawn at a time. Of course, if they're at least slightly sane, terrain will be procedurally generated using a repeatable formula, such that only terrain that gets modified needs to be stored; or at least they'd use Minecraft's solution, where only terrain that's been seen needs to be stored, but that's not very practical for an MMO.

Well, I'm not sure what the plans are for his project, but I'm planning a very similar project in /r/Simulate

The great thing about procedural generation if done correctly is that you don't need to map the whole world at any one time. You take a page out of quantum mechanics and only simulate what's immediately observable. Everything in the horizon is rendered at a lower poly count and everything past that is not rendered at all.

This guy has an engine that can render voxel worlds 300,000 x 300,000 square miles. So it's not as impossible or computationally difficult if it's all handled algorithmically. I don't know what storage requirements are but it's nothing more significant than any other game.

I think this was the most important question in this thread, and he answered it somewhat well. I'd like to see you or another skilled programmer do a Live Technical Q&A with the developer. As a programmer myself I had some of the same initial reactions and would be interested in this.

The point of this Q&A is more to answer questions that have not been answered by the original article. That being said, I understand not everyone wants to submit their email to get there, so I'll be updating the site so you don't need to put in an email.

If you mean mods and such... the game doesn't work like minecraft since you're downloading the client every time you want to play (unless it is cached). I don't doubt that mods could exist, but I have no plans for specifically allowing that to happen. But I am quite sure someone will come up with a hack for at least the 2D version that will allow resource replacement (which would be fine with me).

We will try to make certain tool's uses very diverse, the limitations will only be related to how long it takes to describe the various uses for each tool. For example, you may have a hammer that you use to build things, but it could also function quite well as a weapon, or a means to bash down a door. All of these uses will be easily described using the suite of tools we will develop to describe the universe, but it will take time to find uses that there "should" be. We will be using some clever crowd-sourcing to help with this.

Discovery, invention, experimentation, and ideas are all going to mimic the way they operate in real life. You get ideas from needs + familiarity with related materials + intelligence. You get inventions through experimentation (sometimes it means wasting materials). You'll eventually get an invention that you're able to reproduce consistently. Your invention quite different than someone else's version of the same thing, and every time you create a new object, it will also usually vary slightly from the original (usually by some varying attributes).

There may be a skill for pickpocketing.

I believe so, yes. I have some plans for poisons, it can get pretty complicated when it comes to the issue of blame (especially for AI controlled characters).

Not necessarily.. but only because there is no official distinction between classification of skills at this point. All of those things will exist in the game, you will be able to "train" for them, but at this point we just call them "skills".

What is your experience with other sandbox online games which may have had similar motivations? (UO? Xsyon? Wurm? Darkfall? Shadowbane? Mortal Online?) And what are your thoughts on avoiding similar pitfalls?

I'm not familiar with most of these games. I believe most of the troubles MMOs and other games run into these days come from their own designs. They try to fake too much. They try to simulate very specific pieces of a reality while faking the rest. The fact that stuff doesn't disintegrate, that there are inadequate limits on properties of the world, or a controlled economy. Imo, the only inspiration one should draw from when making a game like this is real life itself, and I don't regret not knowing these other games. I actually think not knowing about them helps in keeping a fresh and unique perspective.

You might be thinking there are other technical reasons for wanting to familiar one's self with other games. But I don't believe I would benefit from that side of things at this point. The game has really been planned out quite thoroughly from a technical perspective. In general, all that is left is it's implementation.

At first, just a health bar. I've considered adding more, but I'm not too fond of the idea.

The only reason why I would want to add more is to give the medical field more depth. Being able to learn the skill of setting bones, making casts, performing surgery... that might add more interesting skillsets.

There may be more tech demo releases.. nothing concrete is planned yet though. There are no plans for further releases in the coming 2 weeks, the next major release is more likely to take place 2 months after getting funded.

This has been somewhat answered in previous posts. To reiterate, there is 1 other core developer working with me and about 10-15 volunteers in the Open Development Program so far (I have about 25 applications to go through though).

As for qualifications, I talk briefly about my own qualifications on the article and the second video entitled "A personal introduction". Other than that, I've been working professionally for the past..10 years as a developer and have about 21 years of development and graphic design experience.

I think many people would be left unsatisfied when presented with my past accomplishments since the most important works have been unpublished games and tech demos I've worked on in my spare time. All of which have been experiments with the sole purpose of learning how to do "this" game and no other.

I will put together a formal presentation that includes my colleague once I've had a chance to formalize it with him.

This questions smells a little bit like we're making a comparison to Minecraft, so I'll start there. Like most other skill related elements of the game, the player is not intimately involved in the creation or execution of any one skill (except perhaps combat, to a degree). The game wont be like Minecraft in that you build your home out of blocks. Especially with the simplest of housing, there will be a sort of "recipe" that results in a home or hut being built.

That being said, later on in the game, characters ability to create structures will eventually advance to the point where players can choose the layout of their own buildings. But it will be more like placing walls, doors, windows, and floors rather than using building blocks.

This sounds great, but I have a couple questions:
1. You guys got a release date?
2. About how much will the game cost?
3. Is it ALL browser based?
4. Will you update the game according to technology? Like , an industrial update, and then a space age update?

1 year for the first public tests of the real game, 3 months for the first public tests of the space demo

Shooting for $20 USD with a cut from all micro transactions between players

Yes, but you won't notice

We will constantly release new content every day/week, there wont necessarily be a big release of content at any time since it doesn't matter. Players discover new abilities at random so even if we did a big release, no one would know the difference. This is partly why I claim it is the most ambitious video game in history because it could be argued that it is all technically 1 game, not 1 game with x expansions.

What is available to be invented/discovered is going to be outlined by us, the developers. The fact that you can invent your own version of an object or skill is more about differences in the resulting object; that every design is slightly different (even requiring different materials). This is meant to mimic the way invention works in real life where you may have different devices and tools that perform the same action, but they are different in that some are more durable, have better functionality, are lighter, have more than one function..etc. Furthermore, the game's knowledge paradigm is such that knowledge is character centric and not player centric. With Minecraft, you can look up how to make something on the wiki and then go ahead and fill in the formula. With the Universe Project, your character needs to know how to make something, or at least have a vague idea, and then he can proceed to make it (given time and the right materials and tools).

Sounds like a wonderful game but it will never come to term. One developer, possibly full-time, with visions of grandeur. Prior to this AMA there should have been far more development beyond hack/slash screenshots. This is War-Z all over again but worse, more like the magical dinosaur MMO.

For the most part, its not a difficult game to create. Pay close attention to the technical details for each development component, it wouldn't take long for a developer to realize that this is possible with one person.

We need active members in the community to know everything about the project so they can answer questions effectively. This cuts down the amount of time I spend answering questions (which I wont be able to do at all once full time dev starts).

Will the game evolve through time. Like, will the game start of at stone age then go to the future in a chronological way? If yes, will we be able to explore new universes in the future? (if the budget and timeline permits it).

If I read the Q&A righty, there will be "respawn?" If so, is it possible to be able to restart with a new character completely (after you used up all 2 characters that you were given) by deleting one and creating another?

I think this is a really important question. If people can die with no repercussions, then the game is going to be totally different than if they had to think about their actions. It's touched upon in the FAQ I read on the website but it completely glosses over the part of the question that asks about how new characters and death works.

If you are playing in perma-death mode, you will be able to start a new character. There is no respawn in the traditional sense. You body wont magically transport to some other location, even in non-perma-death mode. If you get stuck however, you can always hit the kill switch permanently and start a new character (like if you've been imprisoned with no possibility of getting out, or you dont want to wait that long).

Will the Alpha and Beta test be free, or will they cost money? Or will it be like minecraft where the price will be lower than the final game but you will get the final game for free if you pay for the Alpha and Beta test.

I do like the way Minecraft went during development, but its still a bit early to speculate on that. It is not likely that the game will be completely free except for those who participated in the referral/donation programs.

My question- how will combat work? Will it be point-click-wait like Runescape, rapid-click like Minecraft, button mash like Maplestory, etc.
As a combination to this, will damage/health be like in a normal MMO, where a player can be shot repeatedly, square in the chest, without dying, or will it be more realistic, where 1-2 bullets=DEAD

There is a real possibility that certain areas of the planet will have thousands of players all in the same space. There will likely be some lag issues until we get the areas split out onto multiple servers, but we also plan on building an automated server cluster layout algorithm that will layout the areas various simulation servers are meant to handle based on current population and population trends.

As for overpopulation on the planet in general, that isn't going to be a problem. If we need more simulation servers, we can always add more.

A fate worse than death. There will be a suicide button though. However, unless you're talking about the perfect prison, there will always be the possibility of escape, or the possibility of being broken out.

If your character has invented something very valuable, killing yourself might not be an option. You might want to rally other players via the internet to help break you out in exchange for something, or put up a reward of some kind.

Once the game "finishes", maybe catching up to the present or reaching such a far point that nothing really happens, will the game start over? At any point will it be a reset so that the game can continue on and on?

Will we be able to "start over" on another planet in the mass universe after we started with the original one? So people who join at later stages of the game will be able to pick when in time they want to play?

Let's say we start on planet A. We got to the space exploration age and explored the gigantic universe and multiverse if there is one. In that big fat endless space, there are billions of other planets. Can players start on one of those?

Actually, there probably will. Players would be warned about this for months before it happens, but I would be against deleting their character altogether. It might be that we simply remove their character from the game after months of inactivity and no feedback. The character would have to be able to be restored if the player wants to come back though.

None of this is for sure, it depends on how much system resources are consumed for inactive players. If it ends up being too costly, we will implement a temporary deactivation.

For your society questions, YES! That is part of what will make this game interesting. To see what various cultures end up using to progress and see what happens when cultures meet each other for the first time. I'm sure there will be much curiosity if the internet hasn't ruined all that fun (if you know what I mean).

Will it be first-person or third-person like in the videos or will the players have a choice between them? My opinion is to have first-person view or an option to do so because in real life you wouldn't be able to look behind you.

A question I would like to know is how will the land system work? Do you just set up some sort of perimeter or do you just claim it as your own. I know this question is more down the line of development, but it needs to be adressed, because it would suck if you set up a peremeter, got offline, and then some other player took it for themselves. There would have to be some sort of mechanics. I personally think a "finders keepers" rule would apply, but if a permadeth player died, the land is up for grabs. This sort of system would be one of the best because if the game world is the size of the actual earth itself, it would be years before all the land is gone, and the perma-death would stop one tyrannical player from owning a massive amount of land and not doing something useful with it, such as selling it or using it to promote new things into the game.

I think that if you can't protect your land that you "own," then whoever kill you or even build on it when you are alive because you can't do anything about it. Maybe later when governments starts to form, there will be rules and laws about land. But at the beginning, if you can't keep your cave, I'll kick you out by brute force.

Your character will be set to guard when you are offline and will let you know by phone or something that you are being attacked. This also works if you are a town. Many people offline=many people as guard.

You will be able to claim land. The territory markers will expand out from various types of structures (most likely signs or monuments at first). Other characters can destroy these territorial markers or create nearby markers of their own which would likely result in the territory markers showing as contested or neutral territory.

The height of these markers will denote the range of the area they claim.

What is the plan for servers or anything else along that line? By which I mean, will there only be a single universe available at any given time, so every player is going to be on the same planet (pre-space)? Or alternatively, are there going to be multiple instances, at least later on, so that players who missed the early cave-man stage or medieval era don't simply get thrust into an Eve-esque space universe five to ten years from now?

Since most platforms use different server interfaces, how do you plan on overcoming that hurdle, especially for mobile platforms? Since the plan is to release it on phones as well as other platforms. In addition, will you develop for current platforms, or wait until next generation of consoles? And lastly, do you plan on all platform versions to be released simultaneously, or when they are each ready in turn?

Actually, most platforms use similar interfaces. The two most important ones are Websocket and Comet. Websockets come with html5 (but not everyone implements it just yet). Comet is a technique used with AJAX that "fudges" a fully asynchronous connection to the server using 2 AJAX connections. The first connection is suspended, allowing the server to send data back to the client. The second connection is opened every time the client wants to send data to the server.

An idea, however menial. The seperate planets themselves could be hosted on separate servers, to help take the load off of a single one. Then, when a player moves late-game from a sector with one planet to another, they could move from one server to another (loading screen could follow the X series' example, with a warp tunnel or some such).

This could also keep highly advanced players from visiting other planets that were completely unprepared for visitation from "alien" life.

The dictator of a nation, the lord of an aristocratic estate, a business person who makes a lot of real money running in-game businesses (starting, say, Walmart), a famous inventor who is the only one capable of creating something important (like a car), the first person to successfully sail across some ocean and map out the area of land he finds, the first person to travel to space, the first person to land on the moon (assuming there is at least one), the person to architect peace between two warring nations.

I'm not intimately familiar with UO to be able to adequately answer this question. I think I played it a little bit a long time ago, but I don't really know much about it. My guess is: 'a great deal'.

If you read over the answers on the FAQ, these answers here on reddit, and the answers given on the article at http://universeprojects.com you should be in a good position to answer this question (hopefully). Oh, also check the facebook page. I do a "Thought of the day" from time to time that reveals more of the gameplay.

Yes you would have a standard login style. You'll likely be able to purchase more than one game for the same login. This would allow you to have more character slots.

This has been answered in the article in more than one place. I'll pick an excerpt:

There will likely be two modes available to players -- permanent-death and non-permanent-death. There are a few suggested systems for balancing the two player types in the same world. The top runner is a system where players who choose the "perma-death" option, would see accelerated character improvement. This means that players who don't choose permanent death will take longer to advance the strengths of their character, but they would eventually hit the same level. There would be a time and place for both styles.

Additionally, if a perma-death character is killed, but he was part of a strong social support system. His new character could very well get all his "stuff" back, except for physical attributes that are earned.

Both systems will be tested together and at some point, testing will likely take place with perma-death-only. There is quite a bit invested in a character in this game, more so than other games. Especially when a character makes a new discovery or invention, it could be like winning the lottery in some rare cases. Of course, these discoveries/inventions can be passed on to other characters which would make it less disastrous to be killed.

From nothing. Characters entering the world will have only a few basic skills like: making a fire... and possibly one or two more as they come up.

"Ages" are something historians use to classify certain periods of time based on various properties of said time. There are no such classifications in this game as time, technology, and society progress in the same way the world has. Ages will likely be determined afterwards by the community.

Do you know if you are going to incorporate real money into this and make it like a real life choices=real life consequences. For example if you happen to invest your money say 100 us dollars into an investment but it was actually a swindler, would you lose your money for real, and not be able to get it back? If so what happens to the swindler any consequences? Or if you buy a house with real cash and some asshole burns it down, what happens then?

Regarding player-generated technology being added into the game. How will something like, say, a radio (let alone spaceflight) function in the game when they work off of fairly complex physics that go well beyond the usual gravity and motion programming of most videogame physics engines? I hope I've made the question clear.

The form and function of a device wont rely on real world physics. Most "things" out there that we use function fairly similarly. Because of this, we can describe these things with a set of properties that change from one thing to the next. Radios are a unique example however, and they would require a lot of specialized code to implement. Weapons don't often differ too much and would require specialized code for melee and ranged weapons, but after that, adding other types of melee and ranged weapons will be very quick and easy.

There are other things to consider like the engineering involved with building design, but at least early in the game, structural physics wont be involved because players can't actually design their own buildings brick by brick. Think of it more like putting together pieces of a house (like in sims).

I don't have any concrete plans for adding this level of detail for the health of a character. But I have mentioned in other replies that it could be added later in order to expand the depth of the medical profession.

How will crafting work? Will there be a recipe list, like Minecraft or Terraria? Or will new combinations and randomization be completely open? (e.g. would there be a set way to make a pickaxe, or can we come up with new designs?)

Discovery, invention, experimentation, and ideas are all going to mimic the way they operate in real life. You get ideas from needs + familiarity with related materials + intelligence. You get inventions through experimentation (sometimes it means wasting materials). You'll eventually get an invention that you're able to reproduce consistently. Your invention quite different than someone else's version of the same thing, and every time you create a new object, it will also usually vary slightly from the original (usually by some varying attributes).

Once you have an invention, you will be able to put it together by selecting the materials you want to use and then clicking "go". Your character will build whatever you've selected in a minecraft sort of way.

Will we need a basic understanding of engineering and physics to build buildings? Also how will we be building these structures? Would we be putting the frames together ourselves or will we just gather materials and the game will start building it self once you have enough?

So assuming a player is not playing in perma-death mode (if there will be an option) what penalties will there be for dying? For example if the leader of the world's largest faction is assassinated, what's to stop him from simply respawning and returning as emperor or president or whatever?

It could certainly easily happen, however there is a mechanic that ties individual character's loyalties to a specific character. For quite some time, the player's new character would be considerably weaker because of this until he manages to convince each player that his new character is legitimate and manages to get them all to pledge their loyalty to him once again.

This loyalty mechanic is tied to the ability players have to control other people's offline characters, or even online characters (but that is a different subject).

Will there be one global currency, or will each country have their own, each with different exchange rates? I think it would be cool if each player could create their own currency system, and price it based on a global guideline for currency exchange. I.e., 1 US dollar is equivalent to 2 In-game global currency dollars. After that, if a player wants to create their own system of money, they could make 1000 <currency name> be the same as 1 In-game Global currency, and people could open up banks and exchange different currencies. Their would also be a top-list of the most widely-used currencies in the game, so that people could reduce the amount of barriers on currency!

This has been talked about a fair bit already. But in short, you wont be rearranging chemical compositions or shaping metal itself. Once you have the ability to implement an invention, you just need to pick the materials and your character will begin to construct it. Getting the invention is the interesting part. Also every invention is slightly different from the next, even if they're the same type of thing.

This sounds like the "ultimate game" that every programmer has plans or designs for, but they never have enough time or funding or whatever. What makes you different, or in other words what about you will make this project successful?

I have come up with a method of simplification that makes the game possible to do by a single person (within a reasonable amount of time) while maintaining reality in, what I believe is, all the important ways. I've also come up with some innovative methods for solving certain problems. Finally, I've devoted my life to this game, I have no intention of doing anything else.

The Open Development Program allows people to contribute their skills for free, but at the moment we're not hiring as we don't have adequate funding even for ourselves to begin work on the game full time.

The closest thing to a gameplay screenshot has been presented in the article on the main site http://universeprojects.com . Other than that, you'll have to wait 2-3 months after development for the first workable games as per the timeline presented in that same article.

This is an excerpt from the article:
Discovery, invention, experimentation, and ideas are all going to mimic the way they operate in real life. You get ideas from needs + familiarity with related materials + intelligence. You get inventions through experimentation (sometimes it means wasting materials). You'll eventually get an invention that you're able to reproduce consistently. Your invention quite different than someone else's version of the same thing, and every time you create a new object, it will also usually vary slightly from the original (usually by some varying attributes).
Once you have an invention, you will be able to put it together by selecting the materials you want to use and then clicking "go". Your character will build whatever you've selected in a minecraft sort of way.

What's a given estimate on when this game will be released?
Is this a massive download like WoW or completely online?
How high will the graphics be?

Also; A fully honest question; How will reproduction work? It seems like people are suggesting rape or sex, but will it just be a minecraft-esque mating thing where you go up to somebody, click on them and poof its a baby? Or is there a more elaborate reproduction system?

I'm sorry that I posted multiple question but it only allows me to post once every 10 minutes. -_-

The 3D version will likely allow you to customize your character as much as you would expect from an MMO. The 2D version will have much less of that, instead, you'll be able to customize your character based on what he/she wears. The quality of the stuff you wear will also have an effect on how you look to others.

How will the other planets work? What I mean by this is, when players reach space, will the other planets past our solar system be randomly generated? Will planets closer to the sun be hot and farther, cold?

The environment will be affected by certain natural disasters (like fire), but not things like erosion. Landslides will likely be a problem, but that is far down on the development todo list.

Tornadoes would actually be pretty simple to implement so I would expect them to occur fairly early in development. Earthquakes will take a serious toll on the networking code so we will have to play that one by ear and experiment a bit.

Damming falls under the same category as landslides. Its on the todo list, but likely won't be done for quite some time, at least when it comes to calculating the dynamics of the resulting water flow. But building a dam to generate electricity? Sure. Blowing up a dam to release a torrent of water? Not likely for quite some time.

Players who speak different languages will have the option to use Google Translate for live translation.

Characters who speak different languages will have the option to teach each other new languages through a very time consuming process (multiple days). The player wont have to do much though, it's just going to be a progress bar with one player teaching the other.

A base perhaps, but a city would be unlikely. Digging out caverns underground will be subject to the technology the characters possess. It will also be a ridiculously long process, as it would be in real life, so it wouldn't likely be worth it.

This will actually likely be possible. Structures like this will actually have a value in the game regarding territorial marking, the bigger the more territory that is marked. There wont necessarily be limits to how big a structure can be though.

At this point, I'm saying no. I don't believe having this in the game will result in a net positive impact on gameplay. Unless you've already progressed in the game to the point where staying alive trumps living a gimped life, it is too easy for players to simply start over. This would just lead to frustration.

The only positive impact would be the fact that the medical field will have more skills to acquire, but imo, this is not enough.

Naming territories will follow the same mechanics as naming a new invention. The player who creates an invention will be able to name it, but if the invention becomes widespread and people decide that the original name is inappropriate for whatever reason, the general public will have the option to rename it permanently. The same will go for territories (and planets, systems, stars..etc).

If a player starts on release date and starts playing at the dawn of time, and another player starts a month later or such, would that newer player be in a different age or would such player start at the beginning?

It would be like real life. When you're born, you know nothing, but the people around you teach you what you need to know to do well in the world (hopefully).

There will be other planets that open up from time to time to allow players to "start fresh". Starting on a planet with no infrastructure and completely open to possibilities is exciting to a lot of people.

What will the death penalty be like? On your site you said there will be 2 different types of death, Perma death and Not Perma death... Will perma death mean you drop everything you have and die and the character is auto deleted? How will not perma death work? Will you die and re spawn in your town or home or random location with nothing? or would you re spawn with all your items?

With perma death, if no one is around to help you medically, you will eventually not be able to play your character and will be given the option of creating a new character from scratch.

With non-perma-death, you will be unconsious for a long time (same as perma death), but instead of dying, you'll wake up again with no hitpoints and almost no abilities of any kind, with the exception of moving, eating, and drinking. You will have to wait for your character to heal before resuming normal activity.

Yes there will. Not just that, but so far the plan is to ensure everyone knows when you're part of a certain group. Removing this anonymity aids in the human-computer separation issue. Normally there might be cues that a person in real life could pick up on, but there are no such cues in the game, so we will make it publicly known when a player belongs to a certain group. This will also be important for when certain groups are banned from certain territories. It will also help when identifying who is the enemy in battle.

You said that intelligence would be character exclusive... Does this mean if I decide to go down the Perma death path (Gain stats bonuses according to your site) That if my character dies that I lose everything I learned and I have to relearn it on a new character or will it be account based?

But if you were part of a strong social system, and you shared all your skills and abilities, your friends could teach your new character everything your old character once had. The only remaining issue would be your character attributes will have to be built up again (str, dex, int)